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#534 ‘Sleep the Clock Around’ by Belle & Sebastian

Justification: You know how every so often you’ll hear a song and get a sudden rush of intense, crippling emotion? This came up on my Spotify playlist the other day and I was briefly paralysed.

I’ve talked about it a lot on here before, but back in the late 90s/early 00s most of my social life revolved around a club that my then-girlfriend-now-ex-wife and my youngest sister (two different people, just to make clear) DJed at in Adelaide. B&S were a frequent favourite on the CDJs back them, and this got more than a few spins.

And for a moment on the 431 to the city from Glebe Point Road I was back in the smoke-filled environs of Stix Pool Hall on a Thursday night in 2001, surrounded by people I loved and naturally figured I’d be friends with forever, drinking watered-down beer and dancing to a large chunk of my record collection.

That group has now scattered to the winds – London, Montreal, San Franscisco, New York (and, for one of us, currently Cebu in the Philippines) – and those of us still in Australia mainly live in Melbourne and Sydney now. I’ve no idea if Stix still exists, and I’m in infrequent contact with most and zero contact with a few of those people. But for a while there, it was glorious.

Belle & Sebastian, meanwhile, are no longer making records that I particaularly love, certainly not to the degree of their first three, but dear god they’re good live. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure the version on this fan video is the BBC Sessions take, which is about 20% more lively than the original.